PHILIPSBURG:— TelEm Group’s international telecommunication circuits were back up at approximately 10:10 am Wednesday following a major outage affecting all carriers on St. Maarten – after going dark for just over one hour.
According to TelEm Group engineers and technicians, local telecommunication links with Tortola, British Virgin Island were all fully operational at the time of the outage, leading to speculation that the problem would have occurred between Tortola and Miami where the main undersea fiber cable connecting St. Maarten and other carriers pass.
At the time of the alarm, technicians speculated the outage was due to a break in the fiber cable between Jacksonville and Miami, which was damaged by excavating equipment last week, however, contact could not be made to the company’s telecommunication partners in Miami to confirm this.
Full reports are expected to be sent to all affected carriers within the hour to determine the nature of the problem and the source of the outage, until then the technicians and engineers are busy restoring connections and checking equipment configurations.
TelEm Group is continuing to monitor its circuits and equipment as services are restored and will be insisting on additional assurances from its vendors that such major outages will not occur in the future.
TelEm Group hereby apologizes to customers and members of the public for any inconvenience caused by this morning’s outage, which the company says was beyond its control.
